[Rd] alternate licensing for package data?

[Ben Bolker]

Dirk Eddelbuettel <edd <at> debian.org> writes:

> On 22 April 2015 at 11:34, Roger Bivand wrote:
> | While I agree with Martyn with respect to code, documentation, and
> | vignettes, the point Ben raises is relevant and not obvious. Data sets in
> | say GLP-licensed packages are on occasion challenged by Debian packagers

        [GPL]
 
> Not generally the packagers (who get frustrated by this like everybody else)
> but by the "ftp-masters" teams who look over what gets into the Archive. 
> 
> They are the license reviewers, and gate-keepers.
> 
> In several cases we (ie "packagers") had to write README.sources to document
> origins of datasets.  That is generally a little silly as ... R itself
> already enforces in the .Rd files. So for the packages where I had to do that
> the README.sources effectively becomes a forward reference to the R docs.
> But then again the ftp-masters review _thousands_ of packages and having to
> help their workflow is a small burden.
> 
> In general, nitpicky licensing issue have been discussed (to mindnumbing
> length) on the debian-legal list. Those interested in the issue may want to
> peruse or search the archive:
>     http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.legal
> 
> Dirk

Thanks for the information, everyone!  I think I'm just going to
handle it the sloppy way, providing a .Rd file containing
documentation and a URL for the data set.  This is not particularly
good for long-term maintenance, but it seems silly to try to get a
separate package onto CRAN for a *single* (small) data set.

  For what it's worth, I've been informed by the CRAN maintainers
that 

> 'license' is singular in the CRAN policies, something people
  sometimes overlook.
> A package must have a single licence that applies to all of the
  package (even if alternative licences are offered for all or part),
  so "GPL except for file XXX" is not viable.